Friday, September 17, 2004

list member and economist anantha does not think so. this is from thesingapore business times.

china is pretty much all smoke and mirrors.

rajeev

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Tue, August 17, 2004 Singapore

Business Times - 17 Aug 2004

China can't fill economic void left by America

If the US dollar and US prosperity decline, looking to China to takeover as global economic locomotive would be misguided - the Asiangiant has too many problems of its own

By V ANANTHA NAGESWARAN

RECENTLY, I came across an interview with a legendary fund manager,Jim Rogers, in which he predicted a free fall of the American dollarand, with it, the end of American prosperity. He also happens to bevery bullish on China and commodities, in general.

Since the bearish view on America and bullish view on China are atrisk of becoming consensus (if they are not already), it might beworthwhile to indulge in some contrarian thinking on the issuesinvolved.

Prognostications on the impending demise of the US dollar and Americancapitalism remind one of what Mark Twain said on hearing rumours ofhis own death. These predictions have been made before.

Most recently, they were made in the early 1990s when the US fiscaldeficit reached nearly 6 per cent of GDP. Yet, a budget that mandatedspending cuts and tax increases in 1993 did the trick and paved theway for eventual surpluses. The situation has been reversed again inthe last three years. But there is nothing in America's history tosuggest that the trend is irreversible.

The second issue is the current account deficit. It is indeed nearly 5per cent of GDP and given that the GDP itself is around US$11trillion, the deficit, which needs to be funded, is well over US$500billion. However, in the late 1980s, the US current account deficitwas over 3 per cent of GDP and thanks to a substantial depreciation ofthe US dollar, the deficit turned into a surplus in the early 1990s.

No damage was done to American prosperity. Indeed, the decade of the1990s was the decade of the American economy.

To be sure, the magnitudes are different and the US household sectortoo is deeply in debt, along with the government. Further, interestrates are too low to attract sustained funding of the deficit. Hence,along with lower demand growth, a substantially weaker US dollar overthe next few years may be required, to rectify the problem.

If they do come about, a super-competitive US economy might emerge, tothe detriment of the mercantilist Asian nations, notably China. Thatis what happened in the mid-1990s.

The US dollar weakened substantially and three years later, we had theAsian crisis along with the Japanese economic stagnation of the 1990s.

No American spoke of a Japanese competitive threat to the US in the1990s when such talk was the norm in the 1980s.

More than these economic problems, the potential threat to Americaneconomic supremacy is the country's own attitude towardsinternationalism and openness.

American prosperity would be in danger if the US closes itself to theoutside world. Immigrants have made that nation what it is, sinceinception. If that openness were scaled back, it would mark thebeginning of the end of US dominance of the world economy.

Contrary to what I have written above, if America's problems areserious enough to permanently threaten its prosperity, should it beassumed that the problems that China faces would be no more than ashort-term blip on the country's march towards lasting prosperity?

My scepticism about the durability of China's ascent stems from threefactors. One is geo-political. America would not be a graceful loser,if a collapse of the US dollar imperils American prosperity and ifChina fills the void.

Recall Bill Clinton's speech at the recent Democratic Party conventionwhen he mentioned Chinese holdings of US Treasuries as a long-termthreat. If China does indeed pose a threat, geo-political tensionswould rise.

The West is not short of reasons to gang up on China. The North Koreanmissile programme and the Pakistani nuclear programme were both aidedand abetted by China.

There are also a slew of trade issues such as dumping and intellectualproperty protection, where China stands accused of wrongdoing. Anarticle in the Financial Times on Aug 5 takes a harsh look at a recentChina ruling on Pfizer's patent for Viagra being invalid in China.

Second, China's own political transition would be nothing if notmessy. Chinese capitalists may be the best capitalists, but the samecannot be said of Chinese communists. They are not going to give uppower easily. Nor might the resulting tensions be easily contained.

Then there is the Chinese bubble. The credit and investment bubble ofthe technology era of the 1990s in the US and the credit and realestate bubble of the last few years, again in the US and otherAnglo-Saxon countries, could be dwarfed by the current credit andoverinvestment bubble in China.

The most dangerous aspect of China's bubble is that no one knows itsexact magnitude. Data is so unreliable as to be practically useless.

Debt recovery mechanisms - an important part of any post-crisisclean-up - are also weak. Recently, Standard Chartered Plc and othercreditors of Zhu Kuan Group, the bankrupt overseas investment arm ofthe city of Zhuhai in China, failed to win a local court ruling tohelp recover US$1 billion of debt.

Hong Kong-appointed provisional liquidators are investigating a seriesof transactions between 2000 and 2003 that transferred about US$150million in company land, shares and cash from Zhu Kuan to thegovernment and Zhuhai-controlled companies. Creditors in China maywell have to take, not merely a haircut, but a clean shave.

Therefore, the void left by a collapse of the US dollar and Americanprosperity would not be neatly filled by China taking over. The morelikely outcome would be a dangerous vacuum in which there would bemany contenders, including both the US and China.

The assumption of the global mantle by the US from Britain in terms ofreserve currency, global economic leadership and so on, will not berepeated. America was institutionally ready then. Neither China norany other nation is anywhere near ready now.

The vacuum would be inherently volatile and destabilising - both forgeo-economics and politics.

In politics, the disappearance of the bipolar world of the Cold Wargave way to the seemingly unipolar status of the US but, in reality,it also gave rise to the forces of Al-Qaeda and other terroristgroups.

Similarly in economics, the destabilisation of the US would unleashmany forces vying to occupy its place but without being quite ready todo so.

This makes the case for safe-haven assets and resources compellingbecause the fight for economic dominance would also be a fight forresources such as energy and water.

Sunday, September 05, 2004

The Economist, as the voice of NATO, quite candidly explains why itain't international terrorism unless the victims are Americans (ortheir poodles the Brits). Otherwise, it's merely a local affair whichcan be blamed on local nastiness: it is not part of internationalterror even if it is financed by the Saudis and spearheaded byPakistanis. Remarkable exhibition of hypocrisy even by Britishstandards!

So Putin should choose a "political solution". Now why didn't Bush orBlair seek a "political solution" in Iraq or Afghanistan? Oh, thatmust be because it's a totally different set of people. Let's see,we'll call them the "al Qaeda". Yeah, that's the ticket. Yeah. It's alQaeda-led international terrorism that led to the Taliban and 9/11.But when Russia has a problem, that's because Putin (and Stalin) werenasty to the poor peace-loving Chechens, not because of al Qaeda.

Can we say "double-standards", boys and girls?

======================

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3168912

Another siege ends in bloodshed

Sep 4th 2004 From The Economist Global Agenda

Russian forces have stormed a school where hundreds of children andadults were being held by rebels demanding Chechen independence. Over300 hostages have reportedly been killedâmore victims of a war withoutany end in sight

AP

AMID scenes of pandemonium, with naked, bleeding children beingcarried to safety while machinegun-fire and explosions echoed aroundthem, the three-day siege of a school at Beslan, in southern Russia,ended on Friday September 3rd. The Russian authorities had beeninsisting they would not storm the school. But the confused reportsfrom the scene suggest that the final confrontation was triggered whenthe rebels opened fire on children trying to flee after an accidentalexplosion. This made the Russian special forces return fire and stormthe building; later, they battled on with escaping remnants of therebel band, in the school's grounds and in a nearby house.

On Friday night the crisis was declared at an end, though the fate ofsome of the attackers remained unknown. By early Saturday, the deathtoll was given by a Russian official as over 300, half of themchildren; with hundreds more taken to hospitals, the toll is expectedto rise.

The Office of the President gives the official reaction to recentevents. The Moscow Times posts the latest news. Human Rights Watchposts material on Russia, including a report and news on Chechnya. TheUS State Department publishes its "Patterns of Global Terrorism".

The rebels seized the school on Wednesday morning, as pupils, parentsand teachers gathered for a ceremony marking the start of the newacademic year. The scene seemed set for a repeat of the notorioushostage sieges of a Moscow theatre in 2002 and of a southern Russianhospital in 1995, both involving Chechen separatists, and both endingin more than 100 deaths after botched rescue attempts by the securityforces. And, despite the authorities' promises of restraint, so itturned out.

Russian officials say that up to 1,200 people were held. The attackersset free some small groups of hostages in the first two days but saidthey would kill 50 children for every one of their number who died.According to some reports, the hostage-takers demanded the release ofChechen fighters seized by Russian forces in June and the withdrawalof federal troops from Chechnya.

The separatist struggle in predominantly Muslim Chechnya results inlarge part from the exceptional cruelty that Stalin meted out to itspeople at the end of the second world war. Suspecting some Chechens ofaiding the Nazis, he deported the republic's entire population to thefrozen steppes of Kazakhstan. In the 1990s, sons of that deportedgeneration returned to start a bloody war of independence and, in1996, forced Russian federal forces to retreat. After a wave ofterrorist attacks across Russia, in 1999 Russia's then prime minister,Vladimir Putin, launched a second war on the rebels. His popularitysoared and he was elected president in 2000. Though the terroristattacks have continued, Mr Putin was re-elected by a landslide inMarch this year (helped by a media clampdown during the campaign).

The nearest Mr Putin has come to seeking a political, rather than amilitary, solution to the Chechen question has been his policy of"Chechenisation", which in practice has meant putting the rebelliousrepublic in the hands of a favoured local strongman. Until this year,that strongman was Akhmad Kadyrov, a former rebel leader who had beenpersuaded to switch sides. In May, however, Mr Kadyrov wasassassinated. Last weekend, a deeply flawed election for a newregional president was won by Mr Putin's new placeman, Alu Alkhanov.

Meanwhile, Moscow and other Russian cities continue to sufferterrorist outrages. A few days before last weekend's election, twoRussian commercial aircraft exploded shortly after take-off from oneof the capital's airports, killing 89 people. And in the days betweenthe election and the start of the Beslan school siege, a suspectedChechen suicide-bomber blew herself up outside a Moscow metro station,killing ten people.

A local problem, not a global oneThe metro bombing and aircraft attacks were purportedly claimed by theIslambouli Brigades, a group which (under the name "IslambouliBrigades of al-Qaeda") also said it was behind the attemptedassassination of Pakistan's prime-minister designate, Shaukat Aziz, inJuly. Mr Putin has seized on these claims to bolster his argument thathe is, like George Bush, engaged in a war on international terrorism.Russia's Interfax agency quoted a security chief on Friday night asclaiming that there were nine Arabs among those hostage-takers killedat the school.

In truth, though there is some evidence of links between al-Qaeda andsome Chechen rebels, the conflict in Chechnya is essentially ahome-grown problem in need of a home-grown solution. Many of theattacks have been carried out by "black widows"âChechen women who havelost family members in the conflictânot foreign jihadis. Women werereported to be among the hostage-takers in Beslan.

Some world leaders have, unwisely, encouraged Mr Putin in his claimsto be fighting a war on international terror and his equallyquestionable claims to be seeking a political solution in Chechnya. Hewon warm support when he met the leaders of France and Germany thisweek: President Jacques Chirac insisted that Russia was "completelyopen to any discussions about a political solution". Mr Bush offeredhis Russian counterpart "support in any form" to end the hostagecrisis.

Yet so far Russia has avoided looking for a real political solution.The carte blanche given to Russian security forces to abduct, tortureand kill young Chechens suspected of rebel ties spawned the "blackwidow" phenomenon. And it is no longer confined to Chechnya: theneighbouring republic of Ingushetia, which used to be fairly free ofthe arbitrary kidnappings that are common in Chechnya, has suffered atleast 50 of them since the start of 2003, according to Memorial, ahuman-rights group. And incompetence and corruption have rendered thesecurity forces incapable of tackling the rebels: an appalling examplewas the raid carried out by Chechen rebels in Ingushetia in June,which claimed dozens of lives. The terrorists apparently bribed theirway through a series of checkpoints, while (according to some reports)federal troops mysteriously took about ten hours to come to the aid ofbesieged local forces.

While it is not yet clear to what extent mistakes by the securityforces contributed to the school siege's bloody end, it is obviousthat the second Chechen war has no greater prospect of success thanthe first. The willingness of foreign leaders to endorse Mr Putin'sclaims and to turn a blind eye to the abuses in Chechnya can onlycontribute to making it worse.

Saturday, September 04, 2004

The "giant sucking sound" redux? Where is Ross Perot when you need him?

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The Challenge of China and India

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=4462

Stephen RoachThe Financial Times, 31 August 2004

China and India are leading the way in the race for economicdevelopment, but their approaches are very different - what China isto manufacturing, India could well be to services. Together, theycould usher in a broader and more powerful strain of globalisationthat will put pressure on the developed world.

China's manufacturing-led impetus has been nothing short ofastonishing. The industrial sector's share of Chinese gross domesticproduct rose from 41.6 per cent in 1990 to 52.3 per cent in 2003 -accounting for fully 54 per cent of the cumulative increase in the GDPover this 13-year period. The impetus that services have given toIndia's growth has been equally impressive. The services portion ofIndian GDP increased from 40.6 per cent in 1990 to 50.8 per cent in2003 - accounting for 62 per cent of the cumulative increase in thecountry's GDP.

But the strengths of China and India mask weaknesses in botheconomies. Industry's share of Indian GDP has been essentiallystagnant at 27.2 per cent of GDP between 1990 and 2003. As a result,industrial activity has accounted for only 27 per cent of thecumulative increase in India's GDP over the past 13 years - literallyhalf the contribution evident in China. At the same time, the servicesshare of Chinese GDP rose from 31.3 per cent in 1990 to 33.1 per centin 2003. Over the period, the expansion of China's services economyrepresented just 33 per cent of the cumulative increase in overall GDP- only a little more than half the contribution services made toIndian growth.

China has rewritten the classic script of manufacturing-leddevelopment. Four main factors have distinguished itsindustrialisation - a 43 per cent domestic savings rate, impressiveprogress in building infrastructure, surging foreign direct investmentand a vast reservoir of hard-working, low-cost labour. By contrast,India's national savings rate is only 24 per cent; its infrastructureis in terrible shape; and its ability to attract foreign directinvestment - which ran at only $4bn in 2003 - pales in comparison withthe $53bn that poured into China in each of the last two years.

But these disadvantages have not stopped India. By opting for aservices-led path, India has sidestepped the savings, infrastructureand FDI constraints that have long hobbled its manufacturing strategy.Its reliance on services plays, instead, to its greatest strengths: awell-educated workforce, information technology competency andEnglish-language proficiency. The result has been a renaissance inIT-enabled services - software, business process outsourcing,multimedia, network management and systems integration - that hasenabled India to fill the void left by chronic deficiencies inindustrialisation.

China, on the other hand, is deficient in most private services -especially retailing, distribution and professional services such asaccountancy, medicine, consultancy and the law. Exceptions in theservices sector are telecommunications and air travel. Over the nextfive to 10 years, China's gap in services represents a hugeopportunity. In the developed world, services account for at least 65per cent of total economic activity - double China's current share.Expansion of a labour-intensive services sector could also fill animportant employment need, as reforms of state-owned enterprisescontinue to eliminate 7m-9m jobs per year.

If China's manufacturing-led growth continues and India pulls off arare services-led development strategy, the wealthy industrial worldwill face big new challenges. The theory of trade liberalisation andglobalisation maintains that there is little to worry about. In thelong run, the income workers make as producers should show up on theother side of the ledger as purchasing power for a new class ofconsumers, presenting opportunities to suppliers in the developedworld.

The problem is that some of these basic assumptions are in seriousquestion. In their simplest form, "open" economic models comprise twosectors - tradeables and non-tradeables. For rich, developedeconomies, the loss of market share in manufacturing to low-cost,developing nations is acceptable as long as there is a secure fallbackto the non-tradeable services sector, which has long been shieldedfrom international competition.

Yet now the knowledge-based content of the output of white-collarworkers can be exported anywhere with a click of a mouse, the rules ofthe game have changed. Many services become tradeable, not only at thelow end of the value chain - call-centre operators and data processors- but increasingly at the upper end where software programmers,engineers, accountants, lawyers, consultants and doctors work.

Services-driven development models, such as the one at work in India,broaden the global competitive playing field. As a result, newpressures are brought to bear on hiring and real wages in thedeveloped world - pressures that are not inconsequential in shapingthe jobless recoveries unfolding in high-cost wealthy nations. Forthose in the developed world, successful services- andmanufacturing-based development models in heavily populated countriessuch as India and China - pose the toughest question of all: whatabout us?

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Their Other "Dirty" Linen: Evangelism's Quest to Conquer the Worldby S. R. Welch

[Note: A slightly different version of this article was previouslypublished under the title "Sins of the Missionaries" in theFebruary/March 2004 issue of Free Inquiry magazine.]

Each year Americans contribute millions of dollars throughcorporate-giving campaigns and Sunday tithes to support the"faith-based" humanitarian work of overseas Christian missions. Thiswork--feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving medicine to thesick--seems a worthy cause, an outwardly selfless endeavor unsulliedby the salacious headlines and bitter disputes now roiling the life ofthe church at home.

But Christendom's missionaries bear their share of controversy. Thoughmost private donors and corporate sponsors are unaware of it, overseasmissions in certain parts of the world have long been embroiled inscandals involving allegations of predatory behavior towards thevulnerable. Though the largely poor and illiterate victims havecomplained loudly for decades, their allegations involve no sexualmisconduct and thus garner few headlines in the West. Their outrage,vented from halfway across the globe, rarely reaches English-languagemedia at all.

Evangelism is waged in earnest in a large swath of the underdevelopedworld spanning from North Africa to East Asia. Missionary strategistscall this region the "Unreached Bloc" or the "Last frontier."[1] Inthe rural backwaters and isolated tribal hamlets of countries likeIndia, missionaries routinely peddle the fruits of generosity--foodand medicine--as "inducements" for conversion to Christianity. Whenthese allurements fail, more-aggressive means may be employed, notbarring fraud and intimidation. As we shall see below, in India atleast, "harvesting" souls has become an end that justifies almost anymeans.

This subordination of humanitarian service to proselytizing is amatter of theology--evangelical Christians believe they hold a divinemandate, their "Great Commission" from God, to spread their creed. Butit is also a matter of policy. During his 1998 visit to India, forexample, Pope John Paul II bluntly stated that the Christianization ofAsia is "an absolute priority" for the Catholic Church in the newmillennium. He openly likened the Vatican agenda for that region toits conquest of the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. His language, says Sanal Edamaruku, founder of NewDelhi-based Rationalist International, leaves little room forinterpretation, even among secular and progressive-minded Indiancitizens. "It is, in fact, not the fantasy of [Hindu nationalists],"he states, "but hard reality ... nothing less than the conversion of... the Hindus of the world is targeted."[2]

The church's "soldiers" in the field get the message. As a Mumbai(formerly Bombay)-based missionary whom we shall call Paul attests (heasked that his real name be withheld), he and his colleagues in Indiahave been unequivocally instructed by their superiors to "work extrahard in the conversion process and choose any means possible toconvert these heathens." With such marching orders, earthlyconsequences can be cavalierly disregarded. "It's not how we convertthat matters," Paul insists. "Conversion is what counts."[3]

In India, considered one of the richest "harvest grounds" in theUnreached Bloc, the methods employed by missionaries like Paul havestirred seething bitterness and resentment among the "heathen" public.Perhaps no mission tactic galls more bitterly than the intentionaltargeting of any society's most vulnerable members--its children.

Missionaries have long capitalized on the leverage they exercise overIndia's young through thousands of church-run hospitals, schools, andorphanages. In a 1923 report to Rome gleefully titled "The SpiritualAdvantages of Famine and Cholera," the Archdiocese of Pondicherryrelated how a famine had "wrought miracles" in a local hospital where"baptismal water flows in streams, and starving little tots fly inmasses to heaven." A hospital is a "ready-made congregation," thereport contended, where there is "no need to go into the ... hedgesand compel them to 'come in.'" Thanks to infection, they "send eachother."[4]

Thirty years later, a government inquiry exposed the wile by which thebaptismal water had been made to follow so easily. Catholic priestshad been instructed to learn something of medicine in order to gainaccess to the bedsides of sick Hindu (and Muslim) children. There, onthe pretext of administering medicine, the priests secretly baptizedthe children before they died.[5] What is troubling are the reportsthat this practice continues today, with formulas of baptism whisperedand holy water sprinkled surreptitiously over non-Christian patientseven in the hospices of such well-known orders as the Missionaries ofCharity.[6]

Christian missionary schools, too, remain ubiquitous in modern India.Many Hindu families believe that missionary schools offer a goodeducation; for others, a church-run school is their only, or onlyaffordable, option. Nonetheless, these schools can abuse parents'trust by trolling the classroom for converts. In one highly-publicized1998 case, the I. P. Mission Girls' School in the town of Rajkot,Gujurat state, issued New Testaments to Hindu schoolgirls andpressured them to sign declarations of Christian faith. Thedeclaration, printed on the last page of each New Testament volume,stated that each signatory was a "sinner" and that she had acceptedthe Lord Jesus as her "personal savior."[7]

Naturally, parents were outraged. Not only was this "conversion"performed without their consent--illegal in India when minors areinvolved--but several girls reported that school staff had intimidatedthem into signing the declaration. Parents and other Hindus marched tothe school to protest, and a wave of publicity quickly mounted.Embarrassed, the school recalled the New Testaments and published anapology with the promise that "such literature" would not bedistributed again.[8]

Along with the apology, the school accurately denied a rumor allegingthat protesting parents had burned copies of the Bible during theirdemonstration. Nevertheless, this rumor circulated wildly in theIndia's English-language press and was later repeated uncritically byWestern media, adding fuel to a propaganda campaign that claimed thatChristians in India faced regular persecution from Hindufundamentalists. Since the campaign began, the money to missions inIndia has increased considerably--demonstrating that prosecution ofthe Great Commission requires more than Bibles and baptismal water.John Joseph, a Christian member of the National Minority Commissioncharged with investigating reported cases of persecution, complainedthat most of the cases that hit national and international headlinesin recent years were nothing but "colorful lies, half-truths or highlyexaggerated stories unleashed by Indian Christian NGOs and missionarygroups to mobilize Christian donor agencies to open their wallets."[9]

Even when the wallets are open, overseas ministries feel strongpressure to pay at least part of their own way. Some missionaries havebecome quite inventive fundraisers; others have sought revenue in lessthan ethical ways, as recent exposures of child-adoption rackets inmissionary orphanages have revealed.

Like parochial schools, church-run orphanages have long been fixturesof Christian evangelism in India. Legally wards of the orphanage, thechildren are usually raised as Christians, and it is not uncommon forthose who do not find homes to adopt the church as their surrogatefamily and become priests or nuns when they mature. This swells theranks of native clergy, a welcome bonus given the dearth of seminaryadmissions in the West. Distasteful as this may be to many Hindus, anIndian orphanage is within its rights to raise its wards as it seesfit. Still, those rights do not extend to fraud. But fraud is whattwenty-five families encountered in 2001 in Arunachal Pradesh, amountainous state in India's northeast.

With the promise of providing their children an education, a Catholicpriest from the neighboring district of Nagaland reportedly chargedparents 10,000 rupees per child (about $250 each) for tuition, room,and board at the St. Emmanuel Mission Convent in Rajasthan, some 2,500kilometers away in India's northwest. That price was high, but parentsconsidered it a bargain for a "sahib-run" (i.e., Western-style)school. Some parents later developed misgivings, however, and traveledto Rajasthan to visit their children. On arrival they were shocked todiscover that the children were not enrolled at St. Emmanuel's. Infact, they were not in any school at all--they had been placed in anorphanage. The priest who ran the orphanage said he had paid 5,000rupees per child to a fellow priest--from Nyasaland--and allegedlydemanded compensation for this sum before releasing the children totheir families.[10]

The victims of such schemes typically come from India's "tribals,"Hindu communities in India's most underdeveloped enclaves that haveretained distinct local cultures that set them apart from the modernIndian mainstream. Illiterate and desperately poor, tribals rank highon missionaries' target lists for conversion. They are the unreachedof the Unreached.

Both Rome and its Protestant competitors have been particularlyaggressive in efforts to convert the tribals. Exploiting customs thatmake female children economic burdens on their families, missionariesreportedly induce tribal mothers to relinquish baby girls shortlyafter birth. Often the mothers are promised that rich Westerners willadopt their daughters and they will live a "much better life." Themother is typically paid about $70 for her child, which is thenadopted by Western parents for a "donation" of $2,500.

There is an irony to the notion of tribal "orphans," according toArvind Neelakandan, a volunteer with the Vivekananda Kendra (VK), aHindu nonprofit that works among the tribals. In most tribalcommunities, Neelakandan explains, "Orphans as we know them arenonexistent"; parentless children are typically cared for by theirextended family. But, he explains, missionaries will "fleece moneyfrom their foreign donors by projecting these very same children as'orphans'" in fundraising campaigns. Indignant, Neelakandan suggeststhat, rather than focusing their efforts on schemes to raise money orallure converts, evangelists ought to focus on the social bettermentof tribals, particularly their young girls. The VK, for instance,specializes in educating tribal girls in useful--and secular--subjectssuch as science and mathematics.[11]

The practice of allurement, or providing "inducements" to the poor inreturn for their conversion to Christianity, is quite common, and onethat many missionaries readily admit using. It is also nothing new. Inthe days of the Portuguese invaders, the Jesuits simply paid Hindus bythe hundreds to participate in mass baptisms. Today's methods are moresubtle: conversions are now "bought" with food, medicine, promises,and micro-loans. Micro-lending programs are increasingly popular,providing a revenue stream for cash-strapped missions as it addsfinancial credit to the other blandishments missionaries can offer inexchange for conversion.

The practice of enticing the hungry and sick to Christianity withoffers of food and medicine is not illegal per se, but is hardlyethical--especially given that so many of the tribals and dalits("untouchables"), who are its typical targets, have little or nounderstanding of the concept of religious "conversion." The notion ofconversion as such is alien to Hinduism. Recognizing this, MohandasGandhi criticized the practice in no uncertain terms: "I stronglyresent these overtures to utterly ignorant men," he once protested,criticizing missionaries who, in order to gain converts, "dangleearthly paradises in front of them [dalits] and make promises to themwhich they can never keep."[12]

Whatever one calls the offer of material allurements in exchange forreligious conversion, it does not deserve the appellation of"charity." But this is lost on missionaries like Paul, who offers noapologies when confronted with Hindu objections. "If Hindus believethat certain tactics like offering money, food or clothes to theirnaked children in return for embracing Christ is immoral, then whatcan I say?" he protests. "All congregations and missionaries have beenadvised to follow these techniques, as others will only fail. Soundsimmoral but that is the only way."

One cannot help but ask how conversions garnered through allurementscan in any way be considered sincere, to say nothing of genuine, inthe sense that the convert has experienced a significant change inbeliefs. This has been a longstanding criticism of evangelicalmethods, and missionaries in India are reminded of it each time moneyruns short: they are forced to renege on their promises, and theirflocks return to Hinduism. But when asked how aping conversion for abowl of food could be considered a "real" conversion, Paul has aquick, if rather optimistic, answer. "Embracing Christ through 'food,''shelter' or some other way may be considered a full conversion," hesays, because "their children," being raised in the Church, "will soonbe one-hundred-percent Christian."

History suggests otherwise. Duarte Nunes, the missionary prelate ofGoa, expressed the very same doctrine as far back as 1520.[13] Almostfive hundred years have since passed, much of that time under the ruleof pro-Christian imperial governments, and yet Christians stand at nomore than 2.4 percent of India's population. That may be why, out ofeither impatience or desperation, some missionaries have chosen toadopt more persuasive measures than allurement to secure conversions.

In the time of Duarte Nunes, support of the Portuguese militaryallowed the Jesuits to have Hindus forcibly seized and their lipssmeared with pieces of beef, 'polluting' them as Hindus and thusmaking Christianity their only option for salvation.[14] Such blatancyis not possible today. Instead, the violence of others can be used asa threat.

The tribal village of New Tupi lies in a deep, forested valley in thenortheastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. It also borders the districtof Nagaland, where a guerilla war between Naga separatists and theIndian government has ground on for years. A Protestant missionarystarted a primary school in New Tupi and actively evangelized therefor a number of years. Response to his ministry was lukewarm, however,and villagers report that their pastor was feeling pressure to move onto greener "unreached" pastures. Failing to uproot the people fromtheir traditional Vaishnavite faith (a monotheistic branch ofHinduism) apparently became a prestige issue with him, so as a lastresort he played what could be called his "trump card."

The pastor of New Tupi began preaching a new sermon. According tovillagers, he told them to "get converted within one and a halfmonths," or else "everybody will be in trouble." In his warning heallegedly invoked the name of the National Socialist Council ofNagaland, or NSCN, the gun-toting insurgents in nearby Nagaland who,as locals know well, indulge in kidnapping and extortion. The peopleof New Tupi clearly got the pastor's message: Convert to Christianitynow, or terrorists may soon arrive at your doorstep.[15]

Sadly, this is not solely the behavior of a few renegade clergy.Displaying the "neurosis of the converted," as V. S. Naipaul terms it,many ex-Hindu converts seek to demonstrate their faithfulness to theirnew creed by affecting open hostility toward the faith they abandoned.This hostility is usually expressed through contemptuous labeling:calling Hindus "heathens" and Hinduism "demonic" or "evil." Too often,contempt manifests as physical aggression: disrupting Hindu festivals,harassing recalcitrant family members or neighbors, and desecratingHindu temples and relics.

Tension between converted tribals and their Hindu neighbors had gainednational press coverage in Dangs, a district in Gujurat state. Theconflict grew so intense that villages and even families were beingrent apart. In 1999, India's National Human Rights Commission conveneda special investigation into the conflict. Some of the most damningtestimony that investigation heard was given by Ghelubhai Nayak, arespected social scientist and disciple of Gandhi, who has worked intribal welfare in Dangs for over fifty years.

In his testimony, Nayak said that the conflict in Dangs was rooted inthe work of the Christian missionaries. In the preceding three years,Nayak stated, there had been at least fifteen instances in whichChristian converts, "under the influence of their preachers,"desecrated idols of the Hindu saint Hanuman, who has been venerated bythe Dangs tribals for generations. In one incident, he said, theconverts urinated on a statue of Hanuman, in another they "crushedHanuman's idol to pieces and threw it away in the river." In additionto the desecration, Nayak testified, converts had raised the ire oftheir Hindu neighbors by repeatedly publicly denouncing Hindu saintsas shaitans, or "Satans." This was done, again "under the influence oftheir preachers." The native clergy, it seems, where also ex-Hindusafflicted with the Naipaulian "neurosis."[16]

On the whole, no one can deny that through the efforts of Christianevangelists, thousands of people across the developing world have beenfed and clothed. But the question remains, when the benefits ofmission work are weighted against the social costs of aggressiveproselytizing, are the peoples of the Unreached Bloc better or worseoff for having Christian missionaries in their midst?

One has to wonder. According to the World Evangelization ResearchCenter (WERC), there are more than four thousand mission agencies.Collectively they operate a huge apparatus, manned by some 434,000foreign missionaries wielding an annual global income of eighteenbillion dollars. And yet, for all the money that is spent--anastonishing average of $359,000 for every person baptized--thebenefits of evangelism are meager.[17] Even harsher realities arerevealed by WERC research, which finds that most plans to evangelizethe world have fallen "massively short" of stated goals and revealthat church embezzlement equals the annual global income of themissionary enterprise.[18]

Meanwhile, the quality of life for India's Christian populationremains dismal. Despite "crocodile-tears for the oppressed," saysEdamaruku, and contrary to apologists' frequent boast thatChristianization brings justice and equality to the "untouchables,"dalits who convert find that as Christians, they remain "as'untouchable' as they had been as Hindus."[19] While more than 75percent of the Catholics in India are dalits, dalits make up less than5 percent of Indian priests. Most priests come from upper castes. Thevast majority of the church hierarchy is upper caste also, a factbitterly lamented by Christian "untouchables."[20]

Undeterred, Christendom forges ahead with its drive to plant churches.As Paul tells us, the Vatican planned to add forty percent to itsmissionary budget for India in 2003. "That could mean a lot ofrupees," he says. "More churches will be built in India, thus moreconverts." That those rupees could be spent on more productiveendeavors does not occur to him.

Even the assertion that mere exposure to Western ideas andinstitutions provides some benefit holds little water, particularlywhen the principal effect of mission work is to replace one set ofsuperstitions with another. Tales of miraculous healings, evenexorcisms, are frequently found in evangelical newsgroups. In atypical testimonial, an ex-Hindu claimed that, after losing her sightfollowing a fever, her husband had practiced Hindu "witchcraft" on herbut could not heal her. But, after "accept[ing] the Good News" andtaking a vow "never to worship idols," the woman "felt a touch" on hereyes and was miraculously made to see. "Now," she says, "I am allright and all my family members have accepted Jesus Christ."[21]

This is hardly the fruit of Western "enlightenment." In the end,evangelism seems to offer little more than an exchange of idolatry forbibliolatry, gods for devils, and magic for dogma. Meanwhile, familiesare ruptured, division sown among communities, and ancient traditionsno less valid or holy than those striving to replace them aredisparaged for the sake of a jealous ideology bent on homogenizing theworld.

It is not widely advertised in the West that Gandhi, that icon ofcompassion and self-sacrifice, detested proselytizing. In hisCollected Works, he states categorically that "the idea of conversion... is the deadliest poison which ever sapped the fountain oftruth."[22] If missionaries could not conduct service for its ownsake, he said, if the price of their charity was conversion, hepreferred that they would quit India altogether. This was a man whowas neither a Hindu "fundamentalist" nor extremist. And he well knewthe suffering and need of his poorest countrymen.[23]

Nonetheless, missionaries in the field remain ever optimistic, albeitmisguided, about what they are doing. "I do admit our means ofconversation are almost horrible in nature," admits our friend Paul,"but I suppose we are doing this for a reason." Self-doubt seems tohover in his words, but he then finds harbor in a familiar rationale."The reason is Christ. It is honorable."

[1] "The Last Frontier," International Mission Board, December 19,2002, http://www.imb.org/core/WE/lastfrontwo.htm. An entire researchindustry, deploying specialized racial and linguistic databases,ethnic mapping projects, and training resources, has been mobilizedfor the world evangelism movement. See, for instance, Global MappingInternational (http://www.gmi.org/index.html). An updated version(November 6, 2003) is available athttp://www.imb.org/WE/lastfront.asp.

[17] David B. Barrett and Todd M. Johnson, "Status of Global Mission,2004, in Context of 20th and 21st Centuries," World EvangelizationResearch Center, January 2004 (July 12, 2004), online athttp://www.gem-werc.org/resources.htm. Nor are the mid-2004 figuresunusual: Barrett and Johnson noted that "ecclesiastical crime"exceeded mission income by $1 billion in their 2003 report. Accordingto their mid-2004 report, ecclesiastical crime is growing at more than6 percent per year and is projected to exceed mission income by $5billion in 2025!

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At the height of the Cold War, an American Senator from the state ofWisconsin (1947-57) called Joseph R. McCarthy wanted to ferret out anyAmerican with Leftist or even liberal leanings in any walk of life andmade him pay for his beliefs.

As a result, teachers and professors, film and theatre personalities,economists and journalists, writers and authors, in fact anyone whohad intellectual pretensions come under his and a Senate Committee'sscrutiny which spelled disaster to them. For almost a decadeintellectual life in the United States all but came to a standstill.

Betrayal of friends almost became standard practice, so great was thefear of McCarthyism. It was the most disgraceful period in Americanhistory and the worst betrayal of human rights. McCarthy finally diedof drinking and was soon forgotten. But he wreaked untold damage tocivilizational life in the United States.

What McCarthy did for America, H. R. D. Minister Arjun Singh seemsdetermined to do in India. If Communism and Communists were McCarthy'sbugbears, for Arjun Singh it is the Rasthriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).He suspects that many from the RSS have by now been recruited intogovernment service and he wants to `detoxify' it, by eliminating allpeople suspected of being members of the RSS or its supporters. Itwill be remembered that Hitler in his time wanted to get rid of Jews.

Hitler eliminated some ten million Jews by sending them to the gaschambers. What Arjun Singh has in mind, only Arjun Singh knows. In hisMemoirs, Mein Kamf, Hitler wrote: "The receptivity of the greatmassesis very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power offorgetting is enormous. In consequence of those facts, all effectivepropaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on theseslogans until the last number of the public understands what you wanthim to understand by you slogan".

What Hitler advised, Arjun Singh is trying meticulously to follow.Hitler's Propaganda Minister Herr Goebbels would have been proud ofArjun Singh who has been repeatedly saying that it was the RSS whichwas responsible for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and thereforeanybody who has any connection with the RSS even howsoever distantly,deserves to be thrown out of the government apparatus.

In the first place, the law long ago absolved the RSS with any linkswith the Mahatma's assassination. Men of such high distinction andcredibility like Acharya Vinoba Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan havepraised the RSS which does not require a certificate of good characterfrom an ageing but ambitious politician. But Arjun Singh apparentlyhopes that by repeating a charge ad nauseum it will finally stick.Thereby he shows Nazism's influence on his thought structure. In thesecond place there is no law in the country which states that anybodywho believes in the RSS ideology or, for that matter, any otherideology automatically disqualifies himself from being into governmentservice. What the rules specify is that government employees cannotbecome members of any political party under the Service Rules.

As far as ideology is concerned it is assumed that this is strictly apersonal matter, so long as it does not affect the actions of anindividual as an official. That means that no government employee canbe a member of the Congress, the CPI or CPI(M), the Janata, the BJP orany other party, even if his or her sympathies lie with one or more ofthem. That is the position. But consider Arjun Singh's charge that itis the RSS which was responsible for the assassination of the Mahatmaand by that token the RSS has been held guilty by dint of associationwith the past.

Never mind if the charge was dismissed a long time ago but what isboth shocking and painful is that even after fifty-seven years ofindependence the Congress has not dared to condemn the CPI(M) and theoriginal CPI for the traitorous role they played during the Quit IndiaMovement initiated by the same Mahatma. Those Leftist parties hadbetrayed more Congressmen in the months between August 1945 and wehave their own word for it than anyone cares to remember, to betortured and killed by the British police.

Several files in the National Archives of India will show that:

* The CPI made several secret approaches to the British Governmentwith offers of assistance (to capture Congress rebels);

* Communist leaders held several secret meetings with the then HomeMember of the Viceroy's Executive Council, Sir Reginald Maxwell andBritish intelligence officers and other bureaucrats;

* CPI gave assistance to the bureaucracy in intelligence work againstunderground Congressmen. Worse, CPI also submitted reports to thegovernment about the excellent work it had done in sabotaging the QuitIndia Movement.

After Gandhiji was released on 6 May 1944 numerous Congressmencomplained to him about the treacherous role of communists. Writes K.K. Chaudhuri in his comprehensive study entitled Quit India Revolution(page 206); "Gandhi referred the complaints to Bhulabhai Desai whofound that on the CPI's own documents, the Communist members of theAICC acted in a manner diametrically opposed to the Congress, Asub-committee of Pandit Nehru, Sardar Patel and G. B. Pant too foundthe evidence true".

The Congress filed chargesheets on several Communist members, traitorsall. All this is on record. That today's Congress, heirs to that greatparty which fought for independence should today rely on support fromproven traitors, what can one possibly say of it?

If Arjun Singh has guts, he should boycott the Leftists and dare themto throw out the UPA government. Instead he is embracing the Leftistswho have been saying that if the RSS sues Arjun Singh, they wouldbecome a party to the case! It is to this depth of degradation thatthe Congress has come to.

As for Arjun Singh's own credentials, this man didn't have the decencyto resign after the great Bhopal tragedy when he was the ChiefMinister nor has he any explanation to give to his links with theChurhat Lottery. The Bhopal gas tragedy, incidentally, happens to bethe world's biggest incident of its kind.

What deserves to be taken seriously is that if Arjun Singh is notstopped in his tracks he will create a vertical division in thecountry and destroy its basic unity. If the RSS of today can beassociated with what happened 52 years age, why shouldn't the CPM beequally well associated with what happened six decades ago? Accordingto Chaudhuri, "the 120-page main Report of (P. C.) Joshi on the goodwork by the CPI to finish off the Quit India Movement could not havebeen improved by any other collaborator of the British or by anyquisling.

Joshi was so anxious to prove the CPI's bona fides and its utility tothe British that he claimed that it was doing a better job of stemmingthe Quit India Movement, of denouncing Subhash Bose and leaders of theunderground Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia, Achyut Patwadhanetc. than the Government themselves".

If today's Congress has any self-respect, it will throw out theCommunists, lock, stock and barrel and dare it to upset the UPAgovernment. And let the Congress remember that in the last generalelections percentage-wise, the BJP won more votes than it did. Morepeople in India have faith in the BJP than in the Congress.

At this point to execute a witch-hunt against the RSS and byimplication the BJP and the entire Sangh Parivar is to invitenation-wide trouble. Worse, it is to insult people who are aspatriotic as anyone else. Are we to presume that Messers Atal BehariVajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, to name only afew are all traitors and only Arjun Singh and his ilk have the rightto rule this country?

What sort of nonsense is that? In what way has the NDA Government ofVajpayee harmed the country's interests? If this trio can rule thecountry well, surely lesser men and women serving at the lower andlowest level can be equally trusted? The entire administrative staffof West Bengal has been made slaves to the CPM and we have thetestimony of The Statesman (12 August) for that.As that distinguishedand objective daily put it: "West Bengal's officialdom, right down toconstables and peons, is arguably one of the best exemplars ofStalinism outside the erstwhile Soviet Union.

Arjun Singh, thankfully, hasn't yet acquired the nerve and thepolitical training to start a full-scale Left-style ideologicalcleansing, but that he is trying, obviously makes the communistsdelighted. The question then arises whether it will be too high aprice the Congress may and up paying to keep the Left off its back oneconomic policy.

India cannot really go West Bengal's way and survive as a viablepolitical entity", Sonia Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh are warned. Ifthey let Arjun Singh get away with his hatreds, the country will notonly be divided vertically, but it will invite disorders of the worstkind.

Neither the BJP nor the RSS is the enemy of the Congress. The realenemy functions from within like Capt. Amarendra Singh of the Punjaband Arjun Singh from the HRD Ministry and from without like theLeftist parties. These people will destroy not just the Congress butthe hard won unity of the country. Arjun Singh is playing a verydangerous game with the backing of the CPM for his own nefariouspurposes. He has been baulked of his ambition to be the Prime Ministerand he is sulking.

The Congress will do well to put him in his place which is outside thedoor. The RSS will survive, the Arjun Singhs and the Communist thugsnotwithstanding. But in the end it will be the Congress which willforfeit popular support. Let it not be said that it has not beenwarned. What Arjun Singh is doing is as close to what Hitler andGoebbels preached in the past. He is playing with fire. One day itsurely will consume him.